


Through these dead eyes (or, I'm not your zombie babysitter)

by AriesDraco



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mitsuki must have been an adorable infant, Orochimaru? More like OrochiMOMru amirite, Post-Canon, Pre-gaiden, Use and abuse of Edo Tensei summoning, humour/angst means likely mood whiplash, protect your necks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-10 22:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5603515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriesDraco/pseuds/AriesDraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jiraiya finds himself called back from the dead, presumably to help raise a child, and Orochimaru is still an inscrutable bastard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Death is cheap when people know resurrection jutsus, but fortunately, the kid is cute

He died. And now he was standing in front of his former friend and teammate, who was trying to hand him a squirming infant with round, golden eyes. 

“He still hasn't spoken a single word,” said Orochimaru, as if it was perfectly normal to discuss child developmental milestones with an ex-friend whom he had just brought back from the dead in the form of an indestructable zombie. 

His mind reeled with a million questions, but the baby was fearlessly grabbing for his hair and he felt obliged to pick it up and let it, whereupon it immediately latched on to a lock and started suckling on it. Orochimaru sighed, reaching out and removing the offending hair from the child's grip.

“Don't let him do that. Though I suppose ash and dust isn't technically poisonous...”

“Orochimaru... you...”

“You were fairly good with children, right?”

“Did you just Edo Tensei me to babysit?!”

The infant startled at the sudden shouting and began to wail and Jiraiya found himself witnessing a sight he could not ever have conceived of, not even in his weirdest dreams (and they got pretty weird. Toads. You know): Orochimaru, that Orochimaru, who was about as warm as the average snake, who would sooner experiment on babies than coddle them... was comforting the child. Successfully.

“What... are you doing?” asked Orochimaru, looking faintly perplexed.

“Looking for the sake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short prologue to set the tone.
> 
> I have such feels for this pairing and the obvious answer was Edo Tensei. What are illicit resurrections between friends, eh?


	2. People who had never raised children should not be allowed to have children. Oh wait...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jiraiya adapts to being an Edo Tensei zombie and remembers that Orochimaru is both a genius and completely clueless when it comes to different things.

As it turned out, there was no sake. Not that it mattered, really, considering Edo Tensei summons could not get drunk anyway, as Orochimaru helpfully pointed out. Or eat, or drink, or bathe, or fuck. They were, after all, merely weapons, tools to be used and then discarded. They belonged on the battlefield, where it was an advantage not to have to be fed or watered, not in a home, where the soul would be painfully reminded of the simple joys of living, the comfort of hot food after a long day, the cool touch of water on a parched tongue, the feel of dirt and grime being washed away, the touch of a lover and the release that came with it.

He was dead, and then he was back in the world of the living, still dead.

Jiraiya was not amused. While it was comforting to know that he hadn't died in vain, and that all his pupils had been saved in their own ways, he was pretty sure that he hadn't been summoned to make small talk, which was all they had been doing after the shock of resurrection had worn off and the child had been placated. This was, after all, still Orochimaru, missing nin, mad scientist, and overall crazy bastard.

Still Orochimaru. Still, Orochimaru? The last time they had met, he thought that he had made his peace with what Orochimaru had become. He'd cracked his mind for years and years, trying to figure out why. Why did the man who had once been his best friend leave the village that was their home? When had they drifted so far apart that he could no longer recognise what his ex-friend had become? He'd made his peace, killed the questions and accepted it as something he would never understand, but now, now. 

Now Orochimaru was absently (absently! The sannin who had always been crazy focused to the point of tunnel vision) rocking the child to sleep in his arms, smiling faintly but fondly (fondly? He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen that moody bastard look fondly at anything), hair messily bunned with a chopstick (because the kid seemed to like pulling hair), looking for all the world like a... like a... 

Well, not like a homicidal morally-deficient mass murdering legandary snake sannin.

More like a... Jiraiya pushed the word out of his mind, unwilling to go there even in the privacy of his thoughts. 

The child, though. What was Orochimaru doing with a child? He hated children. Except, not really, no. Experimental subjects aside, there was a point in their lives when Orochimaru did smile fondly at at least one child in particular. Nawaki.

But that was ancient history. At some point in time, that snake bastard had gone from seeing children as children to seeing children as test subjects, had gone from distant to completely batshit insane.

But that was history too. Maybe. Certainly, this Orochimaru didn't feel like the same one he'd met before his death. Still.

“What do you intend to do with this child?” he asked cautiously.

“Raise him into a spectacular shinobi,” replied the snake sannin without even looking up, voice nonchalant and casual. “He seems to be a slow developer, though, but then again, even you turned out alright in the end.” The last line was delivered with a smirk, but without malice. Teasing. 

It had been so long, and it made him hope briefly. “And then?”

Golden eyes snapped up at him, hard and cold, and this was the snake he last knew, at that closed off distance when they'd last met. “And then?” echoed Orochimaru, a mocking smile twisting across his pale face. “Take over his fresh, young body and extend my own existence. Is that what you were expecting me to say?”

“Should I have expected anything else?” he snapped back. 

For one alarming moment, he watched the grip on the child tighten and instinct moved him toward the snake bastard, who laid the child down down beside him and formed the hand seal in an instant. 

Jiraiya froze. After all, he was only a weapon to be welded and controlled by the summoner, and if the summoner wanted him to stop moving, he had no choice in the matter. It lasted only a few moments, a warning, a reminder, before Orochimaru dropped his hands and turned back to the sleeping child.

“Tell me, Jiraiya, why did you raise those children?” 

Those children. The Ame orphans? His students? “The next generation is the future,” he replied, tasting the irony even as he spoke. How many of his students were still left alive?

Long white fingers traced the sleeping child's soft cheeks. “A legacy is also a form of immortality.”

“So you picked up an orphan to carry on your legacy?”

Orochimaru blinked at him, as if having lost his train of thought in sudden confusion. “This child is my son.”

Son.

Son?

Son?!

“Who did you knock up?!”

Golden eyes narrowed in irritation. “I told you I've never been interested in that kind of thing.”

“But, then, how?”

“Made him in a test tube by recombining donor cells and incubating him in a bioreactor,” replied Orochimaru haughtily. Then, with a little more concern, “Could that be why he's a slow developer? Maybe I should find a real woman to act as a vessel...”

Jiraiya could practically see the wheels turning in that dumbass genius head. “What do you mean a slow developer?” he asked as a means of distraction.

“He still hasn't spoken a single word.”

“Not even echoing you when you talk to him?”

“Talk to him? Why would I talk to him? He can't answer.”

Jiraiya took a deep breath, then realised that he didn't have to. He never had to again, but he had a feeling this was one habit that he wasn't going to be breaking anytime soon. Especially not if the dumb snake proved as dumb as he was beginning to appear to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this fic was originally typed out in bits and pieces on my mobile phone, out of chronological order. There are 2 more chapters drafted, one more in planning, but nothing's really set in stone.


	3. Something like the aftermath of a snake in the henhouse, except less blood and more fun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a baby snake slaughters a family of innocent down cushions and the zombie babysitter is generally dissatisfied with his plight.

As an indestructable zombie with inifinite chakra reserves, he didn't need to sleep, and, in fact, couldn't even if he wanted to, which he found out after trying and failing for about 3 days straight. Orochimaru apparently found it hilarious watching him struggle, offhandedly mentioning only on the third day that of course Edo Tensei summons couldn't sleep. What use was there in a sleeping weapon? Besides, human beings wasted a full third of their lives sleeping, and wasn't it great that he could now fully utilise his time?

Against his better judgement (and he did have better judgement, regardless of the teasing from his childhood friends (or ex-friends, in this case)), he'd gone ahead to tackle the smug snake bastard and was surprised to find his attack connected. Even if he wasn't (theoretically, because he found that he'd been given substantial freedom) under the snake sannin's complete control, to land a hit on Orochimaru was near impossible at the best of times. Before he'd been able to ponder the significance of this, though, he saw Orochimaru angrily forming hand seals.

The next time he was aware of anything, a week had passed. That was when he realised that his mind could be turned off and on at will, and was reminded that any freedom he thought he had was merely an illusion.

So he started planning his escape. He had done some research on the Edo Tensei jutsu after the death of the Third (just because he preferred reading erotic fiction than ninja scrolls didn't mean he couldn't or didn't) and he knew that short of the summoner releasing the jutsu, there really wasn't any escape, but the thought of being able to sneak out behind Orochimaru's back and running away was enough to help him keep a level head.

Not being able to sleep was surprisingly destabilising. The body was indefatigable, but his soul was still human, and human beings were never designed to exist without sleep. Sleep was a way for the unconscious mind to process the stimuli of the day, to make connections, to sort and store, to remember and to forget. Without it, he found himself overstimulated, distracted, unfocused. But, after all, he was one of the Legendary Sannin, and after a quick trial, he adapted.

The question was, how was Orochimaru doing it?

Even when they had been children, even before that snake bastard started experimenting on himself, Orochimaru had never been very good at sleeping at regular hours, but now that they were, respectively, a zombie and some twisted experiment in immortality, he realised that he hadn't seen Orochimaru sleep at all since he had been summoned.

At first, he'd just been a bit annoyed because it meant that he didn't even have those pockets of time to sneak himself out of the facility, but somewhere in the middle of his third week of resurrection, he walked into the living room to find the one-and-some-year-old Mitsuki playing with feathers after apparently cutting up one of the pillows with a kunai and Orochimaru just standing there, staring into space.

“Oi!”

The first order of business was getting the kunai away from the toddler, but Jiraiya didn't miss the way the other man startled, as if waking from a trance. 

"What are you doing?" asked Orochimaru, looking around like he was seeing the mess for the first time. Soft white down was scattered everywhere, floating and falling like snow, aided by a delighted child throwing it repeatedly into the air and trying to catch them as they fell. Kid was doing a pretty good job of it too, good reflexes and hand-eye coordination. Jiraiya had no idea why that dumbass snake thought this child was slow in any way.

"What am I doing? What were you doing, letting him play with a kunai?" It was a wonder that Mitsuki didn't manage to accidentally hurt himself on it.

That snake bastard had the gall to ignore him, kneeling instead beside the child and checking him over for injuries. The child, for his part, took this as an invitation to throw handfuls of feathers on his parent's black, black hair, glancing over at Jiraiya as if expecting him to participate. He may not have been able to speak, but he did a pretty good job at communicating what he wanted, mostly.

It wasn't all bad, being able to see something like that. Still, excluding the week he had lost, he had been back in the world for one and a half weeks, with no idea why he had been brought back. Well, to babysit seemed to be a reason, considering how much time he had been spending with the child while the snake bastard slithered off to god knows where, but it wasn't like Orochimaru spent that much time away from the kid. Furthermore, if he'd wanted a babysitter, why go through the trouble of using Edo Tensei? And why Jiraiya? 'Good with children?' He'd never looked after children this young before. But his former team mate had been evasive as usual, having deflected and distracted him with updates on what had gone on since his death during their earlier chats. After that lost week though, they hadn't spoken properly again.

Jiraiya sat himself down beside Mitsuki, picking up a handful of fluff and blowing on it to make the feathers fly, watching the kid's golden eyes go wide in excitement as this new way to play with the feathers. He made sure to blow it into Orochimaru's face, because, hell, no one had ever accused him of being mature. Somehow, this resulted in a full blown feather blowing fight where the objective seemed to be to get as much down stuck to the other party as possible. Eventually, though, the only actual kid among them decided that it was time to lie down, tired out from all the running and giggling.

"You can't sleep there on the floor," said Orochimaru exasperated, brushing himself off and picking up the mostly boneless child, who promptly cuddled him and curled into his chest. "Clean up this mess, won't you?"

There were feathers literally everywhere. Jiraiya frowned. "You can't just order me around."

"Yes, I can," said the snake sannin flatly, though his eyes seemed to smile. "But I would have to put Mitsuki down, so, please?"

'Please?' Before he could react, though, Orochimaru had already slipped out of the feather-covered room, leaving Jiraiya to the cleaning. And thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is cursed. My computer refuses to save the documents properly. I have been reduced to writing in gmail and sending it to myself.


	4. Kids who don't sleep are the worst kids, so shut up and lie down already

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even grown ups act like children when they don't get enough sleep.

It was the middle of the night when he shook himself out of his meditative state to find a pair of golden eyes staring at him from under a curtain of black hair. 

"Tell me."

Those golden eyes blinked once, slowly. 

Jiraiya smiled mirthlessly. "Or I can tell you and you can let me know if I'm correct."

"What is it you think you know?" replied the snake neutrally, face hidden by his hair and his arms, wrapped around his tucked-up knees.

"Why you summoned me."

It was unnaturally quiet, something you only noticed when you were dead. There was no background sound of blood rushing through your veins, of your heartbeat in your ears. No steady breathing, just the sound of a breath drawn before speech to help form the words. He was dead, so it made sense, but his former teammate was not, and yet, as still as death.

So it appeared they were in a similar condition, having approached it from opposite sides of life and death.

"Tell me," rasped his once-friend, echoing his words.

"Because it's safest to confide in the dead."

For a moment, silence, as still as the night, then,

"Always with the drama, Jiraiya," scoffed Orochimaru.

"Says the person posed like a horror movie ghost staring creepily at me while I was sleeping."

"You can't actually sleep."

"You need to sleep."

The bastard actually rolled his eyes. "And now you sound like Kabuto. This body does not need to sleep."

"But you do. Today was not the first time, was it?"

From the generally guilty shiftiness, he'd hit the nail right on the head. Idiot. "He could have been badly hurt," added Jiraiya relentlessly. "Imagine if you had been doing something else, something more dangerous, and zoned-out the way you did today."

"I..." the snake sannin gritted his teeth. "I know that."

"But?"

The look his ex-friend flashed him was an exasperated 'you know me too well' look and it awoke a deep nostalgia in him that almost let him forget how much had changed since then because it felt like nothing had changed at all. Even the way he slinked out of his seat suddenly was not unfamiliar.

"But I suppose I must," said Orochimaru, half to himself as he produced a packet from inside his sleeve. 

"What is that?"

"Medicine, for a dreamless sleep. Kabuto sends them," explained the snake sannin, stroking the little packet like it was some small animal. "The side effects are that my senses will be dulled and I will be very hard to wake for the next few hours, so, if Mitsuki wakes up..."

"I'll take care of the kiddo. But... what dream are you trying to avoid?" What kind of dream would lead that arrogant shinobi to accept the dulling of his senses in exchange for not dreaming it?

Orochimaru smirked, but those golden eyes wouldn't face him. "Wouldn't you like to know."


	5. Sleep medications like rohyphenol lead to unpleasant side effects in the mornings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we extoll the virtues of breastfeeding. Or not. A kid that age should be weaned already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say 2 chapters? I meant like a fuck ton more. But for now, a little bit.

After all that planning to sneak out of this place while his summoner was sleeping, he didn't. He couldn't, not with the knowledge that there would be a child here without any supervision. It was a good decision: it turned out that Mitsuki was pretty good at escaping his cot. 

He'd dropped in to check on the kid only to find that there was nothing in bed except for the bed cloths and had a mini panic attack. Fortunately, the kid had only got as far as the next room down the hallway, which contained what appeared to be a rather luxurious bed that obviously hadn't been touched in ages. Upon seeing him, the toddler promptly held up both arms, demanding to be picked up.

That was about when Jiraiya realised that he had no idea how to feed a hungry toddler. Having had no need to eat or drink, he hadn't bothered to find out exactly where the kitchen was, or, indeed, if there even was one in this place. He certainly hadn't come across anything like that during his limited explorations of the hideout. It was a big place, and one could easily get lost in the tunnels, which, perhaps, was part of the point. It also felt oddly abandoned for a place that was inhabited. Probably, in the past, there were many experiments that had been run here in the various rooms, but now, there was mostly only dust. Then again, there were also carefully locked doors and false walls, so who knew what Orochimaru was actually doing? Strange behaviour aside, it was probably too much to hope for that his former friend had gone legit.

Hope? Well, he supposed it had always been been a habit of his. It seemed that one could spend half a lifetime trying to kill that absurd hope that things would be the same again, but all it took was a death and a handful of mixed messages to revive it. 

Though... now that he was a functionally immortal zombie, maybe, just maybe, now that he had all the time in the world, maybe... maybe he could succeed in death where he had failed in life?

Hope, huh?

For now, though, he had a hungry child pawing at his chest and trying to eat his hair. Seemed that he would have to try his luck waking the snake sennin to feed the child.

He'd tried it in the night, because whatever that drug was, it was potent enough that he started wondering if Orochimaru was sleeping or dead. With whatever he had done to his body this time, there wasn't even a heartbeat or breathing to check, but his reflexes were functional. Recalling stories of snakes that continued to bite long after their heads had been cut off, Jiraiya had checked several more times through the night until he was satisfied. Throughout, Orochimaru hadn't even so much as stirred. 

Mitsuki seemed happy enough to see his parent, so Jiraiya put the child down beside the sofa and told him, "Go on, wake him up."

Dutifully, the toddler climbed onto his parent and patted his face. When that didn't work, the kid tugged his parent's top open and began to suckle.

"You're not going to get any milk out of that, kiddo," chuckled Jiraiya before it occurred to him that this was Orochimaru after all and Mitsuki must have learned it from somewhere. The thought of it was enough to squick him right out, though he could easily imagine his former friend explaining plainly that, of course it's better to breastfeed a baby rather than depend on formula. Hurriedly, he made to pick Mitsuki up, but the kid responded by biting down and clinging.

Which did the trick as far as 'wake up the sleeping snake' was concerned. 

He watched Orochimaru go from groggily confused to completely fucking pissed off, chakra lashing out in an angry wave that he barely managed to shield Mitsuki from. Then, those golden eyes focused, looking at him as if seeing a ghost, horror slowly spreading over those features as Mitsuki began to wail.

"Woah, kiddo, it's alright," he told the crying child, bouncing him awkwardly in what he hoped was a comforting manner. He glanced over at Orochimaru, who had his eyes shut again, though this time in concentration rather than in sleep.

"Give him to me."

Jiraiya debated that course of action for about half a minute while Orochimaru sat up slowly, sluggishly. Fighting off the effects of the drug. 

"Are you..." ... 'okay' sounded a little odd in his mind where he completed his sentence even as his voice trailed off.

"I was...startled. Kabuto likes his paralytics," replied the snake sennin, smiling darkly at what seemed to be some inside joke. "Give my son to me. Please."

Mitsuki did seem to like being with his parent better, his frightened wailing quieting down to the fake crying that children employed when trying to get attention. Clever child. And Orochimaru, too, seemed a lot calmer with the child in his arms.

"Kid's hungry," Jiraiya supplied.

"So I surmised," replied Orochimaru wryly, tugging back the collar of his top to reveal a rapidly reddening bite mark on his chest, and Jiraiya swallowed.

Something about that image triggered something in his mind, a vision of ink black hair on pale skin, of fabric pulled back just enough to let the light glint off the sharp relief of collar bones, of shadows, concealing and tantalising, golden eyes gazing up in confusion and want. 

When he tried to recall where the hell that had come from, the vision dissolved and faded, leaving him just staring at the parent and child pair seating before him.

Orochimaru looked like he was going to get up, but paused in the motion and frowned faintly. "I don't think I can carry him and walk right now."

"So... does that mean you are completely helpless right now?" asked Jiraiya, half teasingly half concerned about the contents of that sleeping drug. From Kabuto, was it? That young medic nin that had been Orochimaru's subordinate? Come to think of it, he hadn't seen any other person around in this lair, which could explain why so much of it was covered in dust.

"My chakra control is still perfect," noted Orochimaru, the unspoken threat being that he could still compel his summon to do whatever he wanted. Of course. But it didn't sound that way, not when he spoke with that small smile, like this was just normal banter between friends.

He could choose to read the threat. Or he could pick up the child and find out where the kitchen was.


End file.
